According to the 2014 Third-Party Logistics Study, two areas leaders need to excel in to maintain sideways growth are leadership maturity and learning agility. The former means having the ability to operate at the appropriate level of complexity, ambiguity and scale. The latter means the ability to operate at the appropriate level of disruption, speed and volatility.

There are eight core skills that fall under the umbrella of maturity and agility:

Big data is a buzzword that picked up recognition in the marketing space and has made its way into the business models of companies around the world. It’s a term that simply refers to data sets that are too large to quantify using traditional on-hand data management tools.

Logistics is particularly suited to benefit from big data. Why? Because when it comes to the supply chain, success depends on efficiency. There is a chain of commands that need to be met, and this is best done when transparent information is accessible.

DHL published a study called Big Data in Logistics, and pointed out five areas of logistics that big data has the biggest effect. They include:

The NMFC recently implemented Rule #680, which states that the product MUST occupy at least 65% of the skid space. Below is a document we created to better explain the rule and what it means for your shipments: